‘Only the goat,’ said Malik with a laugh. ‘They seemed happy enough, the men. They had a big stash of beer and whisky and they’d built their own still, made this foul spirit they called nitrofuel. Tasted like poison, which is pretty much what it was. Afterwards I turned the still into a stove, to heat the place better. They had it well fortified and well guarded. They had all the animals and the food. Plus, they had this big metal barrel half-buried in the middle of the yard. Wouldn’t talk to me about it. Wouldn’t tell me what was in it.’

‘So was it their farm then?’

‘No. Not really. They’d killed the family that lived there. They told me the family were all diseased. They’d eaten their own children. Mike and Waggers and the rest went in there and shot them all. Military-style, they said. Executions. One bullet each to the back of the head. They tried to stick to army rules, army ways. Made them feel legit, I guess, excused what they were doing.

‘They wore, like, full army gear – camouflage, make-up on their faces, black stripes and that. Sneaking around at night with their night-vision goggles, communicating with wind-up walkie-talkies, all that “alpha bravo, target acquired, tango down …” stuff. They weren’t real military, they were just playing at it, but they weren’t bad. They had their guns and their crossbows, they dug holes and built hides and set nets and fishing lines and trapped small animals and birds, rabbits, ducks, swans. Once they got a deer. And they knew how to properly forage for stuff I’d never even heard of: chickweed and yarrow, fat hen, bittercress and elderberries. They taught me how important it was to get vitamins inside me. They kept me alive and healthy.

‘They were sick, though. There was no getting around it. They knew it and I knew it. They were all coughing, runny noses, red-eyed. I’d been with Dr Catell, watched him slowly get worse. I knew what it was going to be like, just a matter of time. But they never talked about it.